Feature by Julie Hale

Literature lovers have cause to rejoice this holiday season, with riches aplenty in the way of new releases. Need a gift that will impress your favorite bibliophile? Here’s your cheat sheet for holiday shopping!Since its debut in 1953, The Paris Review has served as a platform for outstanding fiction. A terrific new collection pairs gems from the journal’s archives with expert...

Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

Leah Hager Cohen’s poignant fourth novel, The Grief of Others, follows a married couple as they try to move forward in the wake of tragedy. When their infant son dies, John and Ricky Ryrie struggle to regain their footing. Shifting into denial mode, they return to the business of daily living, which includes caring for their other two children, Biscuit, 10, and Paul, 13. As life resumes,...

Feature by Julie Hale

Books—especially great ones—beget other books. If you don’t believe it, check out the selections that follow. Providing new perspectives on past works, these critical studies, appreciations and fresh editions prove that classic pieces of literature are inexhaustible. Just right for the writer or devoted reader on your holiday gift list, the books below will make any...

Feature by Julie Hale

Whether you’re shopping for a serious scholar or an armchair academic, a mystery addict or a collector, we have a title for every bibliophile on your list. Stuff a stocking with one of the books below, and you’ll look smart this holiday season. INSIGHTS OF A FAMOUS WIFE Offering the inside scoop, so to speak, on what it’s like to live with a moody, complicated genius, The...

Feature by Julie Hale

Technology may have altered the face of publishing, but among true bibliophiles the old impulses persist. In the tradition of old-fashioned bookishness (long may it endure!), we’ve rounded up a delightful miscellany of literary titles. This holiday season, smarten the shelves of your favorite reader with one of these engaging books.Daily inspiration Booklovers can indulge their obsession...

Eminent domains

There's no denying that Southern authors are uniquely bound to their home turf just think about the kind of writer William Faulkner might have become if he'd been born someplace besides Mississippi. In Writers of the American South: Their Literary Landscapes, the remarkable relationship between Southern authors and their native soil comes alive as 12 popular novelists take readers on a tour of...

Cover artist

Chip Kidd occupies a unique niche in the literary world. For the past two decades he has produced book jackets at Alfred A. Knopf, winning wide acclaim for his eye-catching artwork and ingenious designs. His uncanny ability to capture the essence of a book in a single image is showcased in Chip Kidd Book One Work: 1986-2006 , a glossy new volume that offers a wonderful overview of his career....

4,109 issues and counting

What will the folks at The New Yorker think of next? Following the success of last year's Complete Cartoons, their newest coup, The Complete New Yorker: Eighty Years of the Nation's Greatest Magazine, is an eight-DVD set that contains each issue of the weekly in its entirety, from February 21, 1925, to February 21, 2005. That's eight decades' worth of groundbreaking reportage, classic fiction...

Back to the woods

An artist unafraid to improvise at life, Henry David Thoreau was a man who dared to be an idealist. In 1845, he conducted his famous experiment in the woods of Massachusetts, single-handedly building a cabin on Walden Pond, where he weathered two winters in solitude. Honoring his strength of spirit and unique wisdom, Walden: 150th Illustrated Edition of the American Classic was recently...

A writer's refuge

A must-have for any bibliophile, American Writers at Home, co-published by the Library of America and the Vendome Press, provides a peek into the private lives of 21 famous literary figures. Taking readers on a coast-to-coast tour, this wonderful book visits the painstakingly preserved homes of a wide range of writers. From Eugene O'Neill's elegant, understated residence in Danville,...